Cocaine Bear Gets A Free-To-Play Game

We owe an awful lot to Top Gun: Maverick for firing a new jolt of life into Hollywood and the movie-going experience, but we don't give enough credit to the completely bats**t movies that we want to see purely out of morbid curiosity.

It began with M3GAN, the film that saw an AI child's companion slay both literally and figuratively, then continued with the baffling Unwelcome - a film that is definitely not about Leprechauns, but is still bizarre and compelling regardless.

Now, the trend continues with Cocaine Bear, the latest effort from Elizabeth Banks. It sees a bear… do a lot of cocaine. Not particularly complex, but that's the way we like it. As part of the film's immaculate marketing, Cocaine Bear is entering the gaming space.

Cocaine Bear Free-To-Play Game Launches

The era of the video game tie-in game is back, baby. Helping to market Cocaine Bear, the film's Twitter account has revealed that a new 8-bit game is available to play on its website and will cue up the film's release.

The game is something of a Pac-Man rip (Crack-Man, if you will) that lets you play as Pablo Escobear himself, darting around the screen to maul fleeing people and savage incoming ambulances. There are multiple maps to play on and destroy, and you can explore them right now on the film's site.

What Happened To The Video Game Tie-In?

Though there are some seriously poor efforts in the genre of games based on movies, it's still easy to miss an era where video games based on upcoming blockbusters would launch to our delight/ horror.

For the most part, the turnaround for movies has sped up exponentially, meaning that studios recognised the games simply wouldn't sell well enough to justify asking a developer to build a game from the ground up in around six months.

The era has mostly come to an end, and even though the likes of Jumanji: The Video Game seem to trickle through, they're few and far between. At least we have Cocaine Bear bringing the trend back. Thank goodness for that.